Poetry X Updates and Commentary

Tag Tags Tagging Taggity Tag Tag Tags

2005-05-16T00:33:00.000Z

Add tags to poems for ad-hoc categorization! Tags, sometimes called “folksonomies,” are words that describe or categorize a poem, like “20th century modernism” or “Italian sonnet”. Tags can help you find poems that have something in common, based on how other people classify them.

After there's enough tag data to be useful we'll update our search engine to search poems by tags. We'll also be adding a "tag cloud" of the most popular or common tags.

For more about tagging and folksonomies see the Wikipedia entry on Folksonomy.

Kooser's “American Life in Poetry”

2005-05-09T15:30:00.000Z

We are pleased to feature current U. S. Poet Laureate Ted Kooser's new weekly column featuring a brief look at a brief contemporary American poem.

Poetry X v3.0 Launches

2005-05-04T22:25:00.000Z

We are pleased to announce the launch of our third site redesign, which we've called Poetry X v3.0. We rebuilt the site from the ground up to make it faster and more user friendly.

The major new development that comes with this new design is the ability to save preferences, add poems to favorite poem lists, etc. More membership features will be launched later in May. Stay tuned.

We've also streamlined the poem pages, articles, and added more reader control over how poems are presented.

Registered members can upgrade their accounts to turn off advertising throughout the site, add and share multiple lists, and more.

We were rushing to meet the deadline for the CSS Reboot project on May 1st (we just barely made it) so there are a few minor details we'll be working out throughout the week, and we'll be adding new themes and further customisation over the next few days.

Please contact us if something doesn't work. The paint may still be wet but it'll sure look nice once it's dry.

And even if nothing's wrong, don't hesitate to drop us a line. We'd love to hear from you.

Jough Dempsey, Publisher
Poetry X

Lincoln

2005-02-21T08:20:00.000Z

In honour of President's Day (U.S. holiday) we've added a Guided Poetry Tour for poems by and about Abraham Lincoln, the sixteenth President of the United States.

Banks are closed and there's no mail, so what better way is there to spend the day other than reading poems about o captain, our captain?

Link: Poems about Abraham Lincoln

Love Poems

2005-02-14T08:22:00.000Z

Happy St. Valentine's Day!

To celebrate the holiday we've added a new Guided Poetry Tour about Love Poetry.

This tour contains poems about love, poems
to a loved one, poems about a loved one, romantic fancies, sexual overtures, valentines, and poems of parting, or of being separated from one's lover.

If you're feeling down-and-out about love, we've got you covered with a selection of poems about heartbreak, heartache, and general misery due to love.

So whether you're looking for a poem with which to woo
someone, need a poem to send to your valentine, or are
feeling blue and need some cheer (misery loves company,
after all), then dive in with these suggested love poems.

Poems to Memorize or Recite

2005-02-10T08:03:00.000Z

After receiving a tonne of e-mail asking for tips on poems to memorize, or poems to recite for recitations and forensics meets, we've added three new articles to address the subject of memorizing and reciting poetry:

Be sure to leave a Talkback message and let us know what poems you like to memorize or recite to others!

Poems by Amy King

2005-01-24T09:22:00.000Z

Poetry X is pleased to present some poems from contemporary poet Amy King's first full-length book, Antidotes for an Alibi, which was recently published by BlazeVox.

In addition to a sampling of Amy King's poems, the poet herself has been gracious enough to offer some Poetry Xtras commentary on her poems that we're certain you, our readers, will find fascinating. Just click on the little red x graphic next to each poem title for Amy King's comments.

Read poems by Amy King

Over 800 New Poems Added

2005-01-24T09:21:00.000Z

This week we have a huge addition not only to the number of poems (over 800) but also a large number of new poets (over 200) which means that we'll be spending the next week adding biographical details, photos, etc., for each of them.

So if you see a poet's dates as "???-???" it means that we haven't gotten to that biography yet.

Also, we made some changes to the Browse Poets list, showing 50 instead of 25 poets at a time and adding other "breadcrumbs" to help our readers (like you!) find their way around.

E. E. Cummings Poems

2005-01-10T05:25:00.000Z

Avant-garde iconoclast E. E. Cummings enters the poetry archive this week with a large selection of poems from his first two books, as well as numerous other early poems.

Please note that most of Cummings's poetry is still under copyright in the U. S., but we will continue to ~~beg~~ petition the rights holders to allow us to reprint some of Cummings's more seminal work.

Now We Are Legion - 10,000th Poem Posted

2005-01-03T10:09:00.000Z

With this Sunday's weekly update Poetry X has posted over 10,000 poems in our poetry archive.

Many more poems are on the way for 2005 as well. See the poetry archive and read some poems. You have over 10,000 choices.

It was a difficult goal and we (meaning I) worked very hard to bring the site to 10,000 poems by the end of 2004 (the only reason this is being posted on 3 January 2005 is because the site auto-updates in the wee small hours every Sunday night/early Monday morning) - but all of the work was finished before the ball dropped on New Year's Eve.

Speaking of...

Happy New Year, everyone.

Cheers,

-- Jough Dempsey, Publisher
http://poetryx.com

Edgar Allan Poe Mini-Feature

2004-12-20T07:03:00.000Z

In addition to the Collected Poetry of Edgar Allan Poe, and numerous Poetry Xtras notes and commentary about Poe's work, we have also added three of Poe's essays about poetry and writing:

Poetry Contest Deadline Change

2004-12-19T21:02:00.000Z

Since we'll be away for most of the holiday season (until the second week of January, anyway) we've decided to push back the contest deadline until 11:59PM on 6 January 2005:

Poetry Contest Details

This change will not affect the announcement of the winner - that will still happen in late January.

We've received a number of solid entries so far but the contest is by no means over. We'll be reading new submissions right up until the deadline - so if you've been waiting to submit, now's the time!

We also may be adding a second and third prize, the amount or quantity of prizes will depend on how many entries we receive - our goal is to add the entry fees received to the prize pool.

New Poems Added - WCW, Moore, Butler, Mallarmé, Robinson, & More!

2004-12-19T15:15:00.000Z

We're well on our way to our goal of 10,000 poems in the database by the end of 2004.

This week we've added a number of new poems by:

William Carlos Williams

Marianne Moore

Stéphane Mallarmé

Ellis Parker Butler

The Collected Poetry of Edwin Arlington Robinson

and more!

New Theme - Christmas Cheer

2004-12-14T01:29:00.000Z

In celebration of the holiday season we have added a new theme: Christmas Cheer.

If you have been using the default theme you should see the new Christmas Cheer theme immediately. If you're using an alternate theme, you may switch to the Christmas Cheer theme [hint, click here].

Christmas and Holiday Poems Added

2004-12-06T09:02:00.000Z

We are pleased to present a new feature on Poetry X: Guided Poetry Tours. Each poetry tour will provide an orderly path through the large archive of poems and articles that are available on Poetry X.

Our first Guided Poetry Tour is Holiday Poems. In this tour you'll find links to various Christmas and other holiday poems, carols, songs, and hymns that are located in the Poetry X Archives.

Look for more tours on various genres, themes, and styles coming soon.

Poetry X RSS and Atom Syndication Feeds

2004-12-05T17:59:00.000Z

By popular demand we've added some XML syndication feeds this week. So far we've added a feed for our news items (like this very item) but in the coming week we'll add one for new poets, articles, etc.

You can get each feed (just the one so far, of course) in three different "flavours":

RSS 2.0
RSS 1.0 / RDF, and
Atom

All of the feeds will be available in the footer (i.e. at the bottom) of any page. If you don't understand what I'm talking about then this feature isn't for you. We'll be adding a tutorial eventually that demonstrates how to use these feeds for fun and profit. In the meantime, just know they're a way to keep track of updates to the site.

Also, to make feed entries and new updates easier to track, we're also going to be splitting up the news entries by items rather than making one big entry for the entire week's updates (although it's questionable whether this entry breaks that rule or not - is this a separate item from the news feeds?).

In any case, updates are frequent and we don't want to leave anyone behind wondering what is and isn't new.

You can of course also add an Atom feed to this very blog.

Poetry Contest! The Poetry X Prize for Poetry

2004-12-02T03:55:00.000Z

By popular demand, we are pleased to offer our first poetry contest. The Poetry X Prize for Poetry offers $100 and publication on Poetry X for the best previously unpublished original poem. Entry fee is only $4 per poem and you may enter as many original (i.e. your own work) unpublished (i.e. NOT YET published - although poems posted on discussion forums are acceptable). I'm the judge, but all judging will be blind (i.e. I won't see your name until I've selected a winner - just the poem title and poem text).

The deadline has been extended to 31 December 2004.

Full details:

Poetry X Poetry Contest Details

Blogging off PoetryX.com

2004-12-01T21:28:00.000Z

On the suggestion from one of our visitors, I've decided to start an update blog here rather than just listing the updates at Poetry X.

There are several reasons for doing so, but the most important is that within the blogging community people use this site to easily add links to their "blogrolls" and can more easily link to THIS page than they can to our web site at PoetryX.com.

So starting in December 2004 I'll be adding updates (and sometimes some poems and commentary) here in addition to posting a news item entry at Poetry X.

If you like the site (or just like reading my ramblings about site updates) please link to this blog - and let me know! I'll return a link as a way of saying thanks.